William Panenka

Reductions in hippocampal volume have been well established as a correlate of disease expression in a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s dementia, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, HIV infection, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and substance abuse. Although conventional neuroimaging studies focus on the measurement of total volume as a surrogate measure for integrity, abnormalities in hippocampal morphology are intuitively equally important yet less well-studied. Hippocampal cavities (HCs) are a common morphological variant found frequently on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations of the brain. Although they are common findings, their etiology and significance are unclear. We conducted a systematic review of the risk factors for the presence and severity of HCs visualized on MRI. We found that the vascular risk factors of age and hypertension were the most robust risk variables associated with HC, but limited associative evidence exists for a diverse set of other variables including apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype, smoking, depression, transient global amnesia, mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Considerable methodological heterogeneity is a marked limitation of the current literature. Meta-analysis confirmed the presence of significant heterogeneity between studies (I²: 95% CI [94.3%, 94.0%], p
View record